Apologies for cross-posting – but this is too cool not to share 🙂
Creative Commons – this is important for educators. Creative Commons and Second Life combo – gives us an amazing digital event.
From the Creative Commons blog:
Mark your calenders: On Thursday, September 14 at 5PM (SL/Pacific), PopSci.com and Creative Commons will be hosting a special concert in Second Life featuring Jonathan Coulton as well as popular Second Life musicians Melvin Took, Kourosh Eusebio, Etherian Kamaboko, and Slim Warrior. From Jonathan Coulton’s blog:
I will be playing live from a secure, undisclosed location in the real world, but you will see my handsome avatar onstage at a venue called Menorca in the Second Life universe. You can also listen to the concert via a number of streaming type websites … The whole concert, audio and video, will be Creative Commons licensed, so feel free to record it.
More information is available on this wiki. We’ll post more information on the CC blog as soon as it becomes available.
judyoconnell.com 
definitely agree with you about the fascinating issues surrounding metadata (even while it can still bring on the yawns in some quarters!)
i myself and wondering how metadata can faciliate not only *access* to but *use* of digital objects. (i.e. learning). so many digital libraries are built along traditional models of cataloging, but students (and often teachers) cannot navigate them (Library of Congress over here is one case in point).
one way to think about this (in “web 2.0” terms) is how user-generated metadata can faciliate use of digital objects for educational purposes. for instance, teachers/students being able to share annotations, edited portions of images, video, clips, etc.–this all can make up part of the metadata of the object (in fact, give the object meaning).
there was some discussion recently about whether metadata can be copyrighted. (forgive, i forget where). this to me illustrates how metadata is conceived as a “transparent” and natural description of an object, but also as something interpretive, authored. it’s this value-added, user-generated metadata that will end up being fascinating and actually determining the life of a digital object.
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